Good Thought - Poor Execution

I just stay too busy. I thought it would be easy to port everything to the blog, but it requires too much attention.
I'll try again some day when sermon preparation becomes at least 30% of what I am doing.

Slideshow for Sept 13 and thoughts about the current series

This link will take you to the slide show for this sermon. I hope to have the others up and in progress so you can see the progression. I've been so busy. It makes it difficult to let you see what is happening since instead of working on it gradually over the week, I am slamming out huge chunks in 3 or 4 hours of dedicated time. I'm going to try to keep the revision history in the links box until after I deliver the message - then I will only keep the final.
What I'm still not getting out for you is the revision process - that thought changes that happen along the line as I pray and consider which parts of the passage I am using will be high lighted.
Since I am dealing with such large chunks of scripture, there is the potential for 8 to 10 different topical treatments of the passage. Staying true to the stated them is sometimes an impediment. On the one hand, it is freeing; I only have to develop the single consistent theme and gather illustrations along one thought. On the other had, sometimes the passage contains a message that I feel is needed and timely even though it doesn't fit the current theme.
I'll keep praying and being as candid as possible during the development of each sermon. Please feel free to comment.
Make sure you display the speaker notes. That is where the sermon content is. You will find it under Actions in the bottom navigation bar.
Alien Culture Power Point - Sept 13

Harder Than I Thought

Turns out it is much more difficult than I thought to bring you on this journey. I realize now that I use a combination of written and electronic forms in my preparation and it takes an enormous amount of time to back enter the handwritten notes. In order to make this work, I am going to have to modify how I do things. I think I will switch from the spreadsheet to a document per sermon quicker. It becomes unwieldy after column three.
I will need to provide links to multiple files - I will have to work that out. Also, It becomes tedious for you to have to go look at largely unchanged documents just to see what has been modified, so I am going to start making changes in different colors, however, periodically I will reset all colors to black (maybe weekly).
The next step is the collection of scripture cross references and illustrations. These will fill pages and pages and most of it will not be pulled into the final product.
That last two days I have made little progress. There have been numerous distractions at the church office. Without a secretary to protect me (mostly from myself), life gets hectic. Today I will relocate to The Daily Grind, a local coffee shop with WiFi, and hopefully finish the power point rough draft. Essentially, that means the sermon is done. I just need to "beautify" it.

Next Steps

I was out of town for a couple of days, so I am a little behind. If you check the link to the table, you will find that there a couple new columns as I gather scripture references and media illustrations. I also included the dates each sermon is expected to be delivered, but that can change from time to time.

I expect to begin the presentation power point for Alien Culture this evening. Once it is in the works, I will post the link to it as well.

There are notes in the table for passages that Ed will be covering. That is because I am presenting 1 Peter on Sunday nights at XPerience as well.

1 Peter - Welcome to the Planet Table

The beginning

Sermon series come from a couple of different sources for me. Usually I encounter circumstances in the course of day to day ministry and a pattern emerges. I then prepare a series of sermons to address the underlying issues. The other way it happens is a book study. I will begin at the beginning of a book of the bible and go through to the end. Normally I don't do a strict verse by verse exposition, but, rather, follow a single theme throughout the book. This particular series is a little different in that I am sharing it with Ed (the other pastor at The Church at Braden River). That will explain the gaps that I do not address.

First I do a basic brainstorming through the book. I look at large chunks and brainstorm sermon topics that could come from these passages. After a lot of prayerful consideration (and in this case, consultation with my fellow presenter) the main sermon themes begin to emerge. I then begin outlining and collecting illustration, content and cross-reference material. Usually I do this in a 3 column table. I've attached a link to the one I am using for this series. As the sermon begins to develop, I move to power point where I build the text, illustrations and media all together.

1 Peter - Welcome to the Planet - Table

Even after I have begun final development, I still revise my "table". As I make decisions about content in one sermon, it can affect subsequent sermons and so I make updates to the table as I go. Also, you never know when an idea you scrapped two weeks ago might play into what you are doing now, so I never throw anything away.

As the sermons continue to develop, you may want to drop in on the table link from time to time to see the changes.